


I'm okay, if you're okay with wasting time

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Disclaimers</b>:  This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and their various subsidiaries. Title from a song by John Mayer, which I also had nothing to do with.<br/><b>A/N</b>: Spoilers for <b>everything current including LKH</b>. Thanks to <a href="http://leiascully.livejournal.com/profile">leiascully</a> for looking this over!</p>
    </blockquote>





	I'm okay, if you're okay with wasting time

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimers** : This isn't for profit, just for fun. All characters & situations belong to Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, BBC, and their various subsidiaries. Title from a song by John Mayer, which I also had nothing to do with.  
>  **A/N** : Spoilers for **everything current including LKH**. Thanks to [leiascully](http://leiascully.livejournal.com/profile) for looking this over!

There's the guilt. There's always the guilt. He meddles, he knows that he does, and he knows that if he didn't meddle there might be less guilt, but Amy had been right: he can't stand to hear children crying, and one of the consequences of being a Time Lord is that after a few centuries, most everyone sounds like a child. So he meddles.

Right now, his meddling is concentrated on one particular individual, but it's possible that he's meddling now because he didn't meddle enough earlier, at least not in her timestream, and so he's making up for it, taking her on all these adventures because it's the least he can do. He couldn't give her a childhood with the people who love her, but he can give her Jim the Fish and a picnic at Asgard. He owes her that much. And as for the other thing, a life more ordinary, well, he's working on it. The Ponds are displeased, he knows, though they haven't said. They think this is it, that he really meant it when he said that he was done looking, that they'd just let her find them. Bless them, they've never really embraced Rule One the way River will, or maybe the way River has done, it's hard to say.

River, of course, clever, stubborn River, has her own ideas about traveling with him. The first time he turns up, parking the TARDIS in the middle of the corridor outside her set of rooms at university, he doesn't even manage to say, "Hello," before she mutters something unrepeatable, then shuts the door in his face and shouts for him to come back after comps.

"It's a _time machine_!" he yells, through the door, and up and down the corridor others students' doors open suddenly, beleaguered faces peering curiously out at him. "Oh, sorry," he says, waving awkwardly and adjusting his bow tie. "I'm the Doctor."

"Post-docs," grumbles the person nearest to him, and all the students roll their eyes and slam their doors.

"Well, I never," he says, and clambers back into the TARDIS.

It takes him three more tries to find a day when she's not too busy to drop everything and come along to see the universe, time machine or no time machine. She doesn't trust him to get her back on time, not after years of stories from Amelia Pond about the Raggedy Doctor who was supposed to be back in five minutes. He's usually not this persistent, but he keeps trying. Perhaps it's a bit more than guilt that keeps bringing him back to her, but he pushes that thought away, stolidly ignoring the appraising looks that she gives him. She's not River yet; she's still cooking. And as wonderful as it is to see her in her early days, to watch her learn to be the person he already knows, it's bittersweet, too, the joy of their shared adventures always tempered by the sadness of loss in both their futures. A little foreknowledge is a tricky, dangerous thing, he thinks, watching her scribble in her diary, still bright and shiny and new, so unlike the book he's used to.

\+ + + +

He's at a dinner party on Alfalva Metraxis in the sixty-second century when she shows up out of nowhere, poofing into existence next to him wearing an evening gown and a vortex manipulator, and he knows, absent any other confirmation, that this is his River. He knows her the way he knows the TARDIS, which he supposes is to be expected, given the nature of her existence.

"Nice party," River says, unholstering a gun she was keeping in places he shouldn't be thinking about. She catches him looking and winks at him, and he blinks wildly and looks away, peeking over the top of the empty crates they're hiding behind. Several gunshots immediately shoot just over the top of his head, and River laughs at him. "I must say, my love, only _you_ could inspire this much animosity before they even break out the hors d'oeuvre and cocktails."

"Some people just don't appreciate my contributions," he says, frowning. "When did you get here?"

"I've been here the whole time," she drawls, gesturing at her dress. "Some of us are better at incognito. It was a lovely speech. Too bad they started shooting at you in the middle of it."

"Yes, yes, but what are you _doing_ here?"

She smiles at him. "In this dress? Maybe I was out looking for a good man."

He resists the urge to preen, choosing instead to lean over and whisper in her ear. "River Song, are you following me?"

"Believe me, sweetie, when I am, you won't need to ask," she grins. She checks her gun and fires a warning shot over the crates. "Now. Shall we run?"

\+ + + +

It's a bit of a close one-- "But isn't it always?" River laughs-- but soon they're safely inside the TARDIS, the interior lights beaming brightly at them. He shoos River away from the console so he can type in coordinates without her looking on.

"It's usually polite to ask a girl if she'd like to go on a date with you before whisking her away in your time machine, you know," River says, peering around at him from her position by the blue stabilizers.

He smiles down at the console. "Who said anything about a date?"

"Wishful thinking, my love," she says, winking at him. It's terribly distracting when she does that. He wishes she'd do it again, but they've arrived at their destination, and the TARDIS screeches to a halt with its familiar brilliant whooshing noise. River rolls her eyes and pets the TARDIS console sympathetically; the TARDIS lights flicker happily at her. He ignores them both.

"I thought you might like some peace and quiet, just for a bit," he says, opening the door of the TARDIS to showcase the beauty of the place he's chosen to take them.

"Perish the thought," she laughs, but her eyes are shining as she slips her arm into the crook of his elbow.

They do diaries on the deck of a cafe in a late twenty-first century American city River has never heard of, someplace beautiful and quiet but entirely inconsequential, nothing noteworthy for any history books, just lots of trees and happy people and a good cafe that serves a fine cup of strong black coffee and homemade strawberry rhubarb pie. There's no running, which is strange, but talking to River is a bit like coming home, and that usually makes him want to start running, which is probably why he avoids these conversations most of the time. There's nothing left of home save the sadness of the memories he carries around the universe with him, after all, and he's got no wish to be reminded of that. Still, it's comforting, talking to her, especially now, because he knows that she understands what it is to know time the way he knows it, to feel all of it and know all of the infinite possibilities wrapped up in every single moment.

It's a possibility, for example, that they could stay here for years and years, forsaking anything else in the entirety of space and time, past, present, and future, for a little patch of something ordinary, something boring and dull and humdrum and usual. He doesn't even know how that would work, and it's a slim possibility that two such extraordinary people as the Doctor and River Song could even be happy that way for very long, but it's a possibility he's entertaining, nonetheless, at least for this five minutes. Perhaps there is beauty and wonder and value in the boring day-to-day moments of life, the moments he usually skips over because he can't stand the thought of being ordinary. Perhaps with River it wouldn't be ordinary.

He would ask her, but the thought of staying here is entirely too silly to say aloud, and the wishes behind that thought, the feelings he has for this amazing woman, this person who is just as mad and clever and ridiculous as he is, those feelings that are threatening to push this silly idea of normalcy to the surface, those are too frightening, too important, to really let out.

"Doctor?"

River is staring at him, concerned. It's dark outside now, he notices. He must have been lost in thought for some time.

"Nothing, it's nothing," he says, patting her hand. He smiles at her, shaking off residual guilt and leftover longing for calmer days that would never have been calm with him in them, anyway. "Now. How do you feel about the opera? I know just the one."

\+ + + +

"Where shall we go next?" he asks, as they stroll back to the TARDIS, the lights of Paris glittering all around them.

River smiles up at him and pats his arm. "I've got things to do, you know, I can't just skip off with you whenever you like."

"It's a _time machine_ ," he says.

"I _know_ ," she replies.

He stops walking and looks down at her, shaking his head in fond amusement. "Will you ever let me show you the universe, River Song, or are you always going to be this difficult?"

"It would be so much less fun for you if I weren't," she laughs, but after a moment she stops, her levity suddenly exchanged for something far more somber. "You never had to do it, you know."

"Hmm?" he says, immediately deciding that it would be best to be staring off into the distance, looking anywhere but at her, pretending that he hasn't noticed the quicksilver change of the tone of this conversation, hoping that if he ignores it, they won't have to talk about this part. He hates this part.

But River soldiers on, just as he would expect her to. "You never had to try and make it up to me. You know, I probably wouldn't even exist, if it weren't for you and your TARDIS."

"That's not the point. I've taken everything from you, River," he says, serious and sad, the regret he runs from finally catching up to him, leaving him a little breathless from the intensity of it. "Your family, your time. The least I could do was try and make the time you have a little more. . . _interesting_."

"I see. So it was just the guilt, making you turn up on my doorstep? And here I thought you just liked spending time with me," she teases, and he looks back at her, then, grateful for the invitation to lighten the mood.

"I can't stand you, in point of fact," he says airily, but then she steps closer and his cool composure vanishes when her lips brush against his ear as she murmurs, "Liar."

"River, River, River," he says, leaning back just far enough so that he can see her face, "I should never have taught you Rule One so early on."

She raises an eyebrow. "I imagine I'd have figured you out in short order," she laughs.

"Takes one to know one, does it," he says, and she grins at him.

"Absolutely."  
\+ + + +

When they reach the door of the TARDIS, they agree to go their separate ways and save these stolen moments for another day. He asks where she's off to, what adventures of her own she has planned, but she only smiles her enigmatic smile at him and he laughs and says, "Spoilers," while she taps in mysterious coordinates on her vortex manipulator.

"Wait," he says, holding up his hand just as she's about to disappear.

"You'll see me again," she says, her voice rich and warm, like the lights of the TARDIS. "You said that you thought it was time for Asgard. Go get me. I'll love it, I promise."

"It isn't the same," he says, waving his hands around. "It's you, but it's not _you_."

"Believe me, I understand," River sighs.

"Yes, I know," he says ruefully. "But you don't, not yet. I'm sorry for all of it. I'm sorry for meddling. You are magnificent, River, but you would have been magnificent anywhere, anytime. You deserved better, from me."

"Oh, my love," she laughs, reaching out to take his hand, "what do you want for us, a normal, boring life? We were never going to settle. We were never going to be Mr. & Mrs. John Smith."

"No, Mrs. Robinson definitely suits you better," he quips.

"I hate you," River replies, but she's smiling.

"No," he says, stepping closer, reaching out to touch her face. "You really don't."

He kisses her then. It's a much better way to say goodbye.

"I chose this," she says softly, just before she leaves. "Never forget that. I chose this strange backwards life. I chose a life with you in it. And they were right, you know. You're worth it."

"So are you," he sighs to the empty air she leaves behind. "So are you."


End file.
